A complete documentation of my Animation Course progression from 2022 to 2026
Initial brainstorming
Character design sheets and models.
Story-boarding
Final Compiled Storyboard.
Previs
Final Previs.
Character modeling process
Prop Designs.
Animation shot production. (shot 6, 7 and 8)
Post-Production/ Final Animation.
Final Animation.
During week 10, we were given a tutorial on how to use a few of the lighting options in Blender to improve the final presentation of object renders including not only how to add different lighting points but also how to make objects emit light too. With this exercise, it was simply the case of just messing around with lighting options to find one which suits the final render by utilizing all of the different types of lighting points and properties that could be added to objects. This tutorial will be Immensely helpful when it comes to developing the final renders for our animations, and I’m hoping to be able to use a majority of these techniques with future projects to see how it can completely change the final outcome of a render and give said render a much more realistic looking finish for the final product.
Summary of the Final production and Post-Production of My Animated Narratives group work assignment.
This post will act as a reflection for the post production of the Animated Narratives module and as an entire reflection of my first year of studying animation at Ulster University. For my Group’s Animated Narratives production project we needed to develop a shot animation based on the theme of “Escape”. When we where grouped up for the project, My group decided on creating our animation around a group of dust bunnies escaping from an evil fox roomba through a carpet forest. Over the course of two weeks, the idea took the form of a high-octane chase sequence that would result in the dust bunnies being victorious with two of the four dust bunnies being lost in the process.
While our group was developing our previs’ during the pre-production phase, we also made progress with our finalized character models for min it took 3 individual model attempts to get a character design and model that I was satisfied with. Along with character models, I also needed to develop some props for the set and I ended up making several props that would be used in the final animation including a lamp and a set of bookshelves and matching books.
When it came time to begin the final production process and develop the final animation, I used the set of shots I decided to go with based on the final previs and developed my final animated shots based on them. However, the majority of the process was revising the animation of the character models and constantly adding and removing keyframes until I rendered a sequence I was satisfied. I also took responsibility for the post production process and editing the entire animation together and work on the sound design during post production, this was by bar my favorite process in the entire production. Prior to this, I had never used Blender or any major video editing software before and although I initially found the task overwhelming, I found this process to be quite enjoyable and easy to perform and it was easily the most memorable part of the entire animation production process.
In retrospect, The most tedious and frustrating process of the entire production phase was the constant revisions of my shots In order to get a sequence that was as fluent as possible while keeping to the tight time limit as much as I could but it was a constant process of producing test renders and reworking the animation constantly to create fluent movement which was quite time consuming because this was before I was made aware of view-port rendering and so the rendering processes for the tests were quite time consuming.
Aside from this, the amount of communication I had with my group via Discord was immensely helpful for the entire group and we constantly had a clear idea of each of our objectives and I think my group and myself were able to develop and Im glad with the outcome of this production and as of currently this is the first fully completed production I have ever been involved with so I personally see the completion of this production as a massive milestone.
Summary of my First year in Ulster University’s animation course
When it comes to summarizing this year as a whole, when I first arrived to Ulster University at the start of the year I had never picked up any 3d animation and or modeling software prior and this course so far has helped me immensely at learning how to use the likes of Blender and Substance painter for making 3d models and animation thanks to the 3D Digital Literacy module during semester 1 as well as this module too for actually developing a full animated production. This course also allowing me to use my previous skills I had acquired in 2d animation during the Animation studio module during semester 1.
If I was to detail what my favorite part of my first year at university, is the social aspect of it. Prior to coming to Ulster, I didn’t know many like-minded individuals and my social skills were not good. However, upon coming to Ulster I have became much more sociable. Being surrounded by like-minded student whole also have a passion for creating animation and telling stories, I have been able to communicate better with my peers immensely and also use said skills for communication in working with said peers on assignments and coursework. During the first semester, I had a lot of enjoyment through the animation society and their events as well as the other society events that were held and I was able to connect with multiple other students who weren’t in the animation course too.
The only aspect that I felt could be improved with my first year experience is the large amount of group work especially during the second semester. Although I’m aware that working in groups is an essential skill in the animation industry and that it is to improve how I communicate my ideas within a group setting during the production of an animation production. But I feel that it then creates more pressure for the entire group as all members are not going to work at the same pace for reasons that are out of mine and their control. I felt like I would’ve been better for more modules that allowed for self growth and experience at key animating skills and techniques in both 2d and 3d and so it would leave me with an even larger intensive to continue to further my skills in both 2d and 3d so I would be able to work much more efficiently with group members during projects instead of trying to quickly teach myself how to use an aspect of Blender (for example) while trying to develop a production simultaneously and having to constantly refer to the in-class tutorials to refresh my mind on important tools and techniques made these processes slightly more stressful.
Overall though, I was immensely happy with my first year at Ulster University, it has been an amazing experience regardless and I do hope to work on and improve my skills as an animator and prosper more with the further progression of second year.
This post will by my summary and reflection of my second and final component of the world of animation module. I decided to do British animation mostly because not many students chose to do it and I felt it would be an interesting differentiation to the other entries. For the project, I was put into Group 9, along with Abbi Dalzell, Ellen Harbinson and Kaitlin Woods respectively.
For the research, we all decided to do our research on the evolution of stop-motion British animation as we all collectively agreed that stop-motion was synonymous with the British animation industry as a whole and so, we felt it would be perfect to detail the origins, progression, peak and decline for stop-motion animation in Britain.
When it came to gathering information for the poster, we decided to gather our own research on the entire progression of stop motion animation in Britain and then compile the parts of each of our research together as each of us found different points among our research that would be useful entries into the timeline element of our poster. For my research I found an Immense amount of information from “Antoons'” YouTube video titled “The History of British Animation” (2022). This video gave me some insight into some of the major significant events in the history of animation within Britain. Thanks to this video, it gave me a better sense of direction of what information I was looking for and thus, with the basic points received from the Antoons’ video, I was able to find the information for each of the significant events in British animation history along with animations that would’ve been released at the time of these events.
I used multiple websites to find more information that elaborated on significant events and other key details from Antoon’s video like release dates of the films that were referenced in the poster, Finding information on some of the earlier animations was rather difficult as there was not a lot of information documented about the films when it came to exact release dates, production locations and locations were the animations were presented at. Luckily, later examples where easier to get references for as they were developed in a time where the film-making and animation industries kept better documentation of dates and figures due to film-making regulations so later films were much easier to reference and find the details for said references.
When it comes to what I thought went well, I honestly have to say it was how the poster was laid out and how our group collectively worked together to put a large body of information together for the finalized poster. At the start of the research process, My group decided to collectively research the progression of stop-motion in Britain individually, each of us did find different points during our research that other team members may have been unable to find, this as a whole was really useful for increasing the amount of unique points we could add to the final poster to fill in the time gaps of all significant events in the history of animation and make a much more fleshed out final product. The second aspect that I thought went well was my Group’s communication and cooperation to create the poster, Although most of us prioritized the poster’s information, Ellen came up with the poster design along with some entries for the poster. during the process of development, My group constantly communicated our progress through a private discord group chat and if there was any issues with the poster as it was being developed, my team members were quick to respond and the necessary changes were made as quickly and efficiently as possible, while I took responsibility for making sure the poster was printed on time and preparing it for printing.
The key thing that I could’ve improved upon in retrospect, was not allowing much of a balance for gathering research and creating potential poster designs, this was due to me getting so caught up with researching for the poster, that I didn’t leave myself with enough time to develop a poster design idea which my group could’ve used to determine a poster design we collectively wanted to use for the poster. Another aspect I felt could be done better was rehearsing some of the facts and figures of my poster entries so I didn’t have to constantly refer back to said entries to find the vital information I needed for presenting the poster to my lecturers’ which I personally felt, I could have presented my points much more professionally if I had taken taken the time to rehears some of the key features of my entries such as; important names of filmmakers, studio establishments and also the years of when certain works were developed.
Overall, I found this coursework to be quite a large insight into researching the history and development of the animation industry and animation style of a certain region and allowed me to take a closer look at how animation styles can develop and grow in different regions depending on the societies they are created for and the messages that said animations are trying to communicate to their audiences depending on the current conditions of the said societies at the time of said animations development.
It also allowed me to work with more students who I had never worked with before and also somewhat prepared me for the types of sudden group-ups for projects that are sure to happen while out working in the animation industry. It allowed me to get better with communicating problems and ideas with other team members and working with them to create a piece that the entire group can be proud of. As a whole Im satisfied with the work my team and myself were able to produce and present and that we made an effective poster to present our findings and research of the history and progression of stop motion animation in Britain.
Once I was satisfied with my final render, I was tasked with having to edit together all my group’s shots and so I began post-processing. I had never edited an animation and was slightly intimidated prior to editing. However, I learned that Blender has its own video editing options and I learnt how it work incredibly quickly and I have to say this was may most enjoyed process of the entire production.
To improve the animation, I found all of the sound effects used in the animation from Pixabay .com and I was able to compile multiple sound effects into one which primarily helped as several of the shots were still in development when it came time to present our final animations and the sound effects helped convey the narrative despite the absence of some of the shots.
After my group had settled on the set and character designs and all the props were complete and installed. I could then begin the animation process.
For the animation process, our group separated the narrative into its individual shots and from there, each team member was allowed to choose which shots they wanted to work on. I was tasked with animating shots: 6, 7 and 8, I chose to do it this way so that I would be able to animate more consistently based on the previs and so it would increase consistency. I also had to make sure that the beginning and end of my scenes matched with the entries made by the team members who were developing the scenes before and after mine. During the process, I constantly created test renders to get a feel for camera angles, character movements and the animation’s speed in a final rendered form. This process required a lot revision and adjustment in order to get a render which I was satisfied with. overall this process was not necessarily hard but rather tedious.
During the development of my character model, My group began to design the environment and props for the set of our animation project. The main room was designed by Anna Farmer, she would also create an overhead map layout of the room which would also act as a colour reference for the room’s colour pallet (As seen below). Anna would also be responsible for both the Previs and final Production versions of the room and the rest of us worked on multiple different prop models to fill the room and give it more appeal. While designing props for the environment we mostly tried to stick with colour pallets that complemented the colour pallet of the room so that nothing clash too much with the environment or cause attention to be redirected to places it shouldn’t be in the final production. The development of these models was relatively easy as they were primarily regular household furniture and appliances and since my group decided to go with a solid colour design for the animation, no complex texturing was required from the likes of Substance painter, on top of this the colour selection for my props was simply picking what I thought would work best with the room’s colour pallet so I was able to quickly find colour pallets for my props that fit the aesthetics of the room quite well. This was one of my favorite parts of the production due to the fact that they did not require any rigging and props could be developed relatively quick. The first prop I designed was a lamp, which I developed relatively early and was created alongside the first dust bunny model, this would be followed by a series of books and bookshelves along with an old monitor and NES console as well as a small Cameo of some of my original characters as a small Easter egg that was implemented last minute to act as my signature for this project (The final rendered screenshot was provided by Abbi Dalzell). I found these models even more enjoyable to develop and I feel I can confidently say that after this design process, I feel far more comfortable with Modelling props in Blender.
For the character I was going to design for my group animation project, I decided to go with one of the dust bunnies as stated in the pre production reflection. I began experimenting with creating a character model for my character during the development of the early conceptual sketches and so the final character model changed as the sketches were improved leading up to the final turnaround I would develop at the end of the pre-production process.
The first model was a rather basic model as I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to create and was yet to find an appeal that suited the type of personality I wanted my character to have. The second design was mostly a large mass of multiple UV spheres and although it was an improvement from the previous, the design had very strange proportions and I decided to then develop a final turnaround and then base my 3rd model on said turnaround.
This model is similar to the two previous in the way its primarily constructed from UV Spheres with very few modified shapes used in the mesh.
The main problem I had was with the fringe, when i tried to parent the armature to the mesh the fringe would move the mesh of the dust bunny’s face in strange ways, causing me to completely remove the original fringe and restructure the face of the dust bunny on top of this the weight painting needed to be reworked 3 times in order for the mesh to squash and stretch correctly but aside from this, the process was relatively simple, I then added some facial expressions via using the option to export images as planes and then rigged the face to interchange with multiple different expressions.
Overall, I found myself tinkering around with this model primarily during the production process and a majority of my time was spent refining and correcting all issues that were present in the model but in the end I’m satisfied with the final result.
